


rebel yell (in my house on the hill there is room for you still)

by vulpesvortex



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Bisexuality, Celebrities, Coming Out, Deaf Character, Farmfic, Harm to Animals, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Moving, News Media, Pining, Team Dynamics, deaf!Clint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4138209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulpesvortex/pseuds/vulpesvortex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint clicked and opened another page, and then another. "Oh <i>fuck</i>."</p><p>He stared at the page, blinking hard three times, but the headline <i>Gay Cowboy Avenger?</i> stayed stubbornly emblazoned all over his laptop screen.</p><p>(In which Clint has a farm, saves a mouse, accidentally gets outed by the media, and pines over one Bruce Banner.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	rebel yell (in my house on the hill there is room for you still)

**Author's Note:**

> I started working on this fic probably the weekend after the "Hawkeye has a farm" news broke, and because I am a total slowpoke when it comes to writing it's taken me until now to finish it. It was originally just supposed to be a sweet ficlet about Clint offering Bruce some time off at the farm, but then it became a mediafic, and I psyched myself out a little trying to write celebrity gossip while never actually having read a gossip mag, so, yeah. 
> 
> For reasons of retaining my sanity, this fic completely ignores the events of Age of Ultron, apart from the existence of the farm. 
> 
> As for the trigger warnings: the animal abuse appears briefly and only off-screen, and the homophobia doesn't come from any of the main characters.

Bruce was woken by the sound of unsteady footsteps in the kitchen. Even though this was his sixth day at the farm, it took him a moment to orient himself before he realized he must've dozed off reading on the living room couch. Several pages of _The Last Werewolf_ stuck to his cheek when he lifted his head to listen.

A drawer slammed loudly, followed by the rattling of someone rooting around the cutlery drawer.

He threw off the heavy patterned quilt, set aside his book and got up.

He stalked down the hallway, silent on bare feet, until he could peer, unobserved, into the open kitchen doorway from the dark.

A shadowy figure in jeans and a white t-shirt was perched on a stool, occupied with a bleeding gash on its upper arm. The white shirt was marred by dark stains. Bruce recognized the box on the counter as the first aid kit that lived under the kitchen sink.

"Clint?"

The figure jerked, windmilling briefly as it almost toppled off the stool.

"Jesus Christ!" Clint, wild-eyed and bristling like a mad cat, spotted him in the darkened hallway. "Fucking hell, Bruce, I didn't realize anyone was here. I thought I'd left the door unlocked by mistake.”  
  
"Sorry," Bruce said, stepping into the doorway and the faint glow of the kitchen night light. "I didn't mean to startle you. You were making a lot of noise, I thought you might be a burglar."  
  
"Not hiding a baseball bat behind your back, are you?"  
  
"No, I didn't think-" _I’d need one. If it came to it.  
  
_ "There's one under the bed in the master bedroom," Clint said, grinning. "For future reference." He hissed when he shifted on the seat, reminded of his injury as the movement jostled his arm.  
  
Bruce rolled his eyes, stepping closer. "What'd you do to yourself this time now? Let me see."  
  
"Why does everyone always say that? It's not like I go _looking_ for trouble,” he grumbled. “I was in the neighborhood and I ran into some ...friends with an unpleasant disposition."  
  
Bruce flicked on the lights on the underside of the cabinets. He peered into the wound, surprised to see it had a distinct round shape. There were shards of thick green glass sticking out of the torn skin.  
  
"Wait a sec- Clint, what the hell, did you get into a bar fight?!"  
  
Clint tried to turn away, covering the wound with his right hand, displaying a full set of scraped and bloody knuckles. "No! I- I mean I _was_ in a bar but-" Clint deflated, sighing. "I guess so. Yes?"  
  
"Clint."  
  
"They had a mouse in a glass and they were holding it over a candle!"  
  
"A mouse?"  
  
Clint flushed guiltily, and put a hand in the front pocket of his t-shirt, where Bruce realized sat an unusual bump he hadn't noticed before. Carefully, Clint extracted the wounded mouse from his shirt, leaving more red streaks from his open knuckles. "They wanted to make it dance."  
  
The mouse squirmed pitifully in Clint's grip until he cupped it gently around the back so there was no pressure on its small, burned-red feet.  
  
Bruce dragged a long-suffering hand down his face, but he couldn't help but smile at Clint and the mouse, him covered in bruises and holding it so tenderly. Warm fondness filled his chest.  
  
"Okay then, let's see what we can do for it."  
  
Clint insisted on fixing the mouse up first, so Bruce put cooling salve from the first aid kit on its tiny feet and wrapped them in small strips they cut from the bandages, but he put his foot down when Clint tried to get up to find a shoebox and something that would pass for mouse food.  
  
"Ah ah ah ah!" He pushed Clint back down on the stool. "Mickey can hang out in your shirt for a little while longer while I do you too."  
  
Clint snickered and narrowed his eyes at Bruce at the last bit, but fortunately submitted to being treated with antiseptic cream and bandaged without further comment.  
  
"There, butterfly bandages should do it for now, but if it opens again in the morning you should probably get that looked at." Bruce gave him a stern look. "At the hospital. I'm not actually a medical doctor."  
  
"'Goddammit, Jim, I'm a physicist, not a doctor'?" Clint grumbled, and they both laughed.  
  
Even though it was very late, Bruce agreed to watch the mouse while Clint emptied a shoebox from the hall closet and filled it with straw from the barn out back and put some cornflakes and apple peel in a little saucer in the corner. He even made a little nest from a holey old sock.  
  
"There, that should do it right?"  
  
"He'll be comfortable as can be, at the very least till morning." Bruce gave Clint a soft pat on the shoulder and steered him towards the hallway. "You should go to bed. It's late and you're hurt."  
  
"Right, bed," Clint said, as though it were a foreign concept.  
  
"Master's free," Bruce said, already turning down the hall to go to his own bedroom.  
  
"Free? But you got here first."  
  
"I always sleep in the guest room."  
  
"Afraid I haven't changed the sheets?" Clint grinned.  
  
"It's not actually my house. What you do in your bed is your business," Bruce added, peering at Clint over the top of his glasses.  
  
Clint opened his mouth.  
  
"Do not say it's "where the magic happens"!" Bruce cut in, laughing again.  
  
"Alright, alright," Clint waved him off. "Goodnight, Dr. Banner."  
  
“Goodnight, Agent Barton.”  
  
   
*****  
  


"I can leave if you want," Bruce offered calmly over breakfast the next morning. "I imagine you didn't come here looking for company."  
  
Clint had given Bruce a key to the farm a few months ago, when the Avengers Tower had been particularly packed after Carol, Peter, Jennifer, Jess, Nick Cage, and, temporarily, Danny Rand had all moved in while several of the Avengers already in residence had guests over. (Thor had been entertaining the Warriors Three, and the ensuing party had necessitated the presence of a building crew on one of the floors for two weeks afterwards.) He'd found Bruce at the kitchen table one night, looking pale and tense, and jumping miserably when Clint blundered into the quiet darkness of the empty kitchen. Bruce had obviously been more than a little strained by the crowded living arrangements, and Clint had gone out the next day to get the key to his Ohio safehouse copied.  
  
The farm was a leftover from his spy days, when he'd had boltholes all over the place, all as off-records as they were off the map, and he'd kept the Ohio farm on after S.H.I.E.L.D. got decommissioned because it was reasonably close to New York and he liked its isolated location. And, if he was being completely honest, he’d never gotten the hang of living in one place for any length of time, a habit as much carnie as it was spy. He'd written down some directions and told Bruce to feel free to go whenever he needed to get away from things for a while.  
  
Far as Clint knew, Bruce had taken him up on the offer, as he hadn't seen him around the Tower all that week. Clint never told the other Avengers where either of them disappeared to, if anyone noticed at all. He suspected Natasha knew, but then she also had a key: it probably hadn't been much of a puzzle to figure out.  
  
He hoped to catch Natasha hanging out here at least once, but so far he had been unsuccessful. He suspected the ill-tempered cat that had made itself comfortable in the barn was her doing.  
  
He'd run into Bruce once before, but that'd been just as he was leaving. As it was, there was no established protocol for crashing in on an occupied Farmstead of Solitude.  
  
"No, that's alright," Clint said, holding up a hand. "I wouldn't wanna chase you off. And at least I won't have to cook while you're here," he grinned, “right?”  
  
"Are you sure? It _is_ your house. I wouldn't want to intrude."  
  
Clint couldn't help a smile. "Doc, compared to the zoo back home, just us is gonna be more than enough peace and quiet for my taste."  
  
*****  
  
None of the usual supervillains suffered a bout of rampant insanity - well, no more than their usual - over the weekend, so Clint and Bruce ended up hanging out together at the small farm undisturbed.  
  
They took care of the mouse, periodically rewrapping its bandages and taking turns keeping it warm and off its feet in their pockets. They even dug up an old terrarium abandoned among the previous owner's mess in the tool shed to mend and turn into a temporary cage. (The mouse had gnawed its way out of the shoebox on the first night, though it hadn't made it far on its sore paws - Clint had found it curled in his sheets in the morning.) Bruce liked to read in front of the hearth in the living room, and Clint spent his time messing about with his laptop and fletching a bunch of traditional wooden arrows to practice with out back. In the evening they played cards: Bruce always counted cards and Clint was way too good at spotting tells to make the poker game anything but a sham, but they had a lot of fun making outrageous bets and trying to prove the other was cheating.  
  
"I'm sorry," Clint said insincerely when Bruce accused him of peeking at his cards while he was in the bathroom, "it's not my fault your eyebrows are sending me signals in morse, ASL _and_ braille."  
  
Of course he _had_ peeked, but that was beside the point.  
  
"How would they even send a visual cue in braille," Bruce said, laying out his cards.  
  
Clint made the universal sign for 'fuck if I know', also known as the shrug.  
  
"Another one?" Clint asked, taking the cards and shuffling them.  
  
"No, I think I'll start on dinner. Tacos okay with you?"  
  
As if Bruce didn't know very well that Clint would eat whatever was put in front of him, even if it was badly burnt or its ingredients barely qualified as food, like McNuggets or Tony's protein shakes.  
  
"Tacos are fine," Clint said, and tried not to salivate visibly.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
"Oh my god, what did you even put in these?" Clint moaned around a mouthful of taco meat and lettuce. "Remind me to steal your food more often. Fucking hell, when I said you’re in charge of dinner, I didn't know you could _cook_."  
  
"It's just mince and beans and taco spices. Maybe if you didn't live on pizza and ramen you would know what actual food tastes like," Bruce teased, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, cooking’s basically just chemistry."  
  
"I think the word you're looking for is magic." Clint licked red sauce and meat juice off his wrist where it was dripping down his hand. "Voodoo."  
  
Bruce hid his amusement behind his hand and rubbed his eyes. "I really don't know how you've survived this long."  
  
"It’s ‘cause I am a Disney miracle, Banner," Clint informed him, a trickle of taco juice running down his chin. "Goddamned eighth wonder of the world."  
  
"Pretty sure that's my line," Bruce said, grinning.  
  
"Oh really? Been hanging out on the Empire State Building much lately?" Clint said, and ducked Bruce's hand when he swiped at him.  
  
"Just eat your freaking tacos, you dumbass."  
  
"Agent Dumbass," Clint tried to say, but most of it was crunchy taco noises.  
  
  
  
*****  
  


Clint was dicking about on his laptop when his cell went off.  
  
"Hey, Kate," He said, cradling the phone against his shoulder.  
  
"Are you wallowing?" Kate asked, belligerently and without pre-amble.  
  
"No," Clint denied automatically. "What happened to ‘Hi Clint, how are you, long time no see’?" He sighed dramatically, rummaging through the mess on the desk. "Kids these days, honestly."  
  
"I saw you five days ago, loser." Kate said, unperturbed. "And you were wallowing, so I'm calling to see if you've dragged yourself off your couch and away from the Netflix yet."  
  
"I think it's just 'Netflix'."  
  
"Loserflix," Kate said. "And I'm coming to drag you off the couch right now. No more King Kong for you."  
  
Clint became suddenly and acutely aware of Bruce lying on the couch a few feet away, nose buried in _Advanced Particle Physics_ , and wondered how far the tinny voice from the cell phone carried.  
  
"I'm not in New York actually," he said quickly, before Kate could say anything more incriminating. "Managed to crawl away a few days ago."  
  
"Oh jeez, it's even worse, isn't it? Don't see him for a few days and you gotta pull a full-on Castaway on yourself?"  
  
"Only if Bruce counts as the volleyball."  
  
"..."  
  
"Did I mention he's here?"  
  
"Clint, you dog!" Kate exclaimed. Clint winced at the fistpump that was pretty much audible through the phone.  
  
Clint dared a look over his shoulder. Yup. Bruce was looking at him. Shit.  
  
"Did you actually want anything, or did you just have some insults you needed to release on an unsuspecting victim?"  
  
"Nah, Tommy took care of those this morning. He says 'you're welcome', by the way." There came a _thump_ and crash over the phone line as Kate dodged what sounded like a sneaker, followed by a potted plant. "Hey, that was my baby cactus!"  
  
There was a commotion on the other side as Kate retaliated with a couch pillow.  
  
"Right, sorry. I'll leave you to your wallowing then, or should that be swallowing?"  
  
"Katie-!"  
  
"Bye, sweetheart. Enjoy your weekend!" Kate yelled wickedly, and clicked her phone shut.  
  
Clint stood a moment apprehensively listening to the dial tone.  
  
"Kate?" Bruce asked, and very kindly didn't say _What the hell was that?_  
  
"Hawkeye." Clint explained. Bruce didn't hang out with the Young Avengers too much, probably 'cause none of them were rocket scientists. "Bright kid, but-" He waved a hand as if to say _Brain injury. Totally nuts. Very tragic._  
  
_Under no circumstance to be taken seriously,_ Clint wanted to add, but somehow managed to keep his mouth shut. _None at all_. _Nope._  
  
Bruce raised an eyebrow. After another moment, he went back to his book.  
  
Clint surreptitiously let out a relieved breath.  
  
Crisis averted.  
  
He resisted the urge to put his head in his hands and start laughing hysterically. When he got back to NYC he'd never hear the end of his romantic weekend in Saint Clairsville with Bruce Banner. Never leaving suddenly seemed like an attractive option, and not just because Bruce was here.  
  
  
  
*****

 

"What are you doing?" Bruce asked the next day, when they were both reading in the living room.  
  
Clint looked up from his book. "Huh?"  
  
"With your hands. You keep moving your fingers?" Bruce pointed at Clint's left hand, lying against his stomach, thumb and forefinger together, the other fingers fanned out.  
  
"Oh!" Clint sat up and relaxed his hand, flexing his fingers. "It's the ASL alphabet. I gotta keep my hands in practice or I'll get slow. It's hard to make signs in quick succession if your hands are stiff," he explained. He flashed rapidly through the alphabet, then again backwards. It barely took a minute.  
  
"You speak ASL?"  
  
"You speak Portuguese, don't you?"  
  
"Why-"  
  
But Clint had anticipated the question and intercepted it. "Same reason as you." He shrugged. "Circumstance demanded it."  
  
"Can you do that again?" Bruce asked, pointing at his hand.  
  
Clint went through the alphabet again, slower this time, and rotating his wrist to display the positions from the side as well. When he went back again backwards, Bruce copied him on the last five signs.  
  
"What was F again?"  
  
Clint made the sign again. It was the one Bruce had stopped him on before, with the thumb and index finger touching and the rest spread out.  
  
"Teach me the rest," Bruce said.  
  
They went through the alphabet a few more times, Clint correcting Bruce's positions where needed. After the fifth time, Bruce managed a decent run from A to Z without prompts or corrections.  
  
Bruce looked down at his hand. "Cool," he pronounced.  
  
“Signing letters isn’t used that much when you’re speaking ASL, but it keeps my fingers flexible.” Clint shrugged. "What about you? You speak anything else?"  
  
"High school French? Some Hindi from when I was living in India. And I got a decent dose of Latin at uni. Not sure how much of that's still banging round my skull though. You?"  
  
"Some Russian, Spanish, a little French and German, and some pretty specialized Hungarian. Also I can cuss in just about any language," Clint added, grinning proudly.

Bruce let out a low whistle. "I guess they really do teach you something in spy school."  
  
"Your tax dollars at work."  
  
"What about morse code?"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"Military hand signals?"  
  
“They’re very useful, actually. I should have a talk with Steve about teaching them to the team.”  
  
Bruce arched an eyebrow, grinning. "Smoke signals?"  
  
Clint barked a laugh. "Will you believe me if I say yes?"  
  
"Huh," Bruce said, impressed. "Guess you really are the eighth wonder of the world."  
  
Clint ducked his head. "Nah," he said, "just on the receiving end of some very extensive government training."  
  
  
  
*****

 

Manhattan was still standing untouched the next day, and so was the rest of New York.  
  
“Huh,” Clint said, going over the lackluster news reports of nothing-to-do-with-supervillainy. “Guess evil’s taking a few days off. I’d hate to think they’re planning something.”  
  
Bruce came up behind Clint, skimming the news articles over his shoulder. “Let’s hope they’re just licking their wounds from the last time.”  
  
“Let’s,” Clint agreed. “How long do you think we could stay gone before Nat drags us back?”  
  
He’d already been at the farm for more than a week, Bruce thought. Normally, he would’ve gone back by now, but right now that seemed like it might jinx Clint’s time off. He didn’t have any plans or appointments in New York beyond running some experiments in his lab and catching up on some more reading anyway, so there really wasn’t any reason not to stay put and travel back together when Clint was rested up too.  
  
“Guess we’ll find out,” Bruce smiled back. “We’re gonna need to do a grocery run if we wanna be comfortable for much longer, though. I think we’re about to run out of toilet paper.”  
  
“Can’t have that,” Clint agreed.  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
Clint hadn't realized how long it'd been since he'd properly done groceries until he was pushing a cart round the local MiniMart with Bruce. At the Avengers Tower the fridge got restocked regularly by whatever service Tony (or more likely, Pepper) had arranged, and when he was living on his own he tended to worship at the altar of the take-out menu whenever money wasn't an issue, which lately it hadn't been.  
  
But now he was grocery shopping - properly, with a cart and vegetables and everything- with Bruce Banner at a supermarket in a rural backwater town in Ohio, and they were gonna go home and cook and read by the fire and not have sex of any kind. When did his life get so surreal.  
  
Clint lobbed three bags of Cheetos into the cart as they passed the chips aisle and ignored Bruce's eye roll.  
  
They made their way round the supermarket, stocking up on the essentials - poptarts and ramen, duh - and a few treats.  
  
Bruce took one look at Clint’s pile of junk food and shook his head. “I have no idea how you are alive right now.”  
  
“What do you mean, I got all the food groups right here,” Clint protested. Clint held up the gallon of Sunny Delight and his six pack of Coors, “Fruit and vegetables,” the potato chips, “carbs,” the jerky, “meat”, and the cheesestrings, “dairy!”, as he loaded them onto the belt.  
  
“I think you forgot the sugar and fat group,” Bruce said dryly.  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
They were working on dinner - chicken madras, with apple and rice - when the yelling started outside. Clint parted the curtain and looked out, groaning as he took in the scene in the yard. "You've got to be kidding me."  
  
The assholes from the bar fight were congregated on his front lawn. What the fuck.  
  
"Bruce, come over here. Please tell me people aren't this stupid."  
  
Bruce left off stirring the sauce and walked over, wiping his hands on the kitchen towel. Clint saw his eyes widen as he looked out the window.  
  
"I'm guessing those are your friends from the bar?" He said, a smirk teasing at the edge of his mouth, though Clint could tell he'd gone tense.  
  
"Yeah, I ran into them again when I went back for the milk. They musta followed me." Clint hung his head, blowing out a deep sigh. "Christ, what's a guy gotta do to get some peace and quiet round here."  
  
"You do seem to attract trouble," Bruce said, smiling again. Clint was glad to note he didn’t seem overly worried.  
  
"I guess I should go send them off." He grabbed his bow from where it was leaned against the wall next to the kitchen door. The yelling was getting louder. "Stay here."  
  
"Don't take too long, dinner's almost ready."  
  
Clint spun and blew him a kiss, grinning as he went out the door to meet the hooligans. "Yes, dear."  
  
The volume of the jeering increased as he stepped out the door. The men were keeping their distance from the porch, standing in a half-circle just off the driveway. Their jeep was parked further back at the bend. They were dressed like a bunch of bikers from an 80s movie, all leather vests and handlebar mustaches. And baseball bats.  
  
As if dealing with the tracksuit mafia wasn’t enough.  
  
Three he recognized from the bar (he’d dubbed them Boots, Ponytail, and Tiny - on account of Clint thought his brain must be tiny, given the way he squinted confusedly at everything), and one more flanked them on the right. He’d have to come up with a name for him.  
  
“Decided to come out and face us, huh, mouse boy?!”    
  
Clint let out an internal sigh and imagined them getting pounded into the ground at the beginning of the Terminator.  
  
Clint stepped off the porch, walking up to them slowly so the house and the car were behind him. He didn’t want the Challenger to get scratched up if a fight broke out, and he intended to keep Bruce out of it altogether. The last thing they needed was a Hulk smashing to alert the world to their little hidey-hole. “I see you’ve brought a friend,” he said, nodding at the red-haired man he hadn’t seen before. _Ginger?  
  
_ “Yeah man, you tell ‘em there’s an ass bandit hiding in our neck of the woods, they all wanna have a go,” Boots said, spreading his arms jovially. “It’s a fucking party, ain’t it, gents? Right down to the piñata.”  
  
A burst of insults erupted from the peanut gallery.  
  
“Fucking sissy,” Ginger spat, visibly grinding his teeth.  
  
“Fucking show you you and your bumboy ain’t welcome!”  
  
Clint rolled his eyes. “This is private property. You should leave,” he said calmly.  
  
“Or what, you’re gonna shoot us with your faggy little bow and arrows?”  
  
“I’m within my rights to, yeah.” Clint nocked an arrow and took aim at Boots’ shiny toecaps. “The first one’s gonna be lucky and I’ll only maim a little bit. Anyone decides to stick around after that’s gonna get an arrow somewhere a lot more unpleasant. Consider this your last warning.” He released the shot, and the arrow buried itself in the ground half a hair from Boots’ toes.      
  
“Dude! What the fuck!”  
  
Something about Clint firing the bow seemed to click in Tiny’s little pea brain, and he yelled out: “Hey, wait a sec- That’s Hawkeye! Dude, that’s an Avenger!”  
  
Clint suddenly regretted not wearing a mask with his costume. That seemed like an oversight.  
  
“No way man, Hawkeye’s a chick,” Ponytail yelled dismissively.  
  
“There’s two Hawkeyes, you dumb fuck, and only one of ‘em’s a chick.”  
  
“What the fuck man, there’s a fag in the Avengers?!”  
  
“You know, I’ve really had it up to here with your ignorant bullshit.” Clint said, amusement at the whole ridiculous situation evaporating at last. “At first this was sort of hilarious, but I’ve fucking had enough now. Get the fuck out. I ain’t asking again.” He lifted his bow. Behind him he heard the kitchen door open, and he knew Bruce was standing in the doorway. In a moment, he’d come down the stairs and try to intervene.  
  
Cursing under his breath, Clint fired a shot past Tiny’s ear, close enough to graze. “Leave! Now!”  
  
Tiny’s eyes went wide, and the direct attack seemed to be enough to trigger the animal response to flee. Two hundred pounds of muscle and stupidity went thundering back to the Jeep. Sadly, the other three men stood their ground, albeit uncertainly. He needed a little more for a herd response, apparently.  
  
“I will have you all down before you lay a finger on either of us, I fucking promise you,” Clint said, sensing Bruce come up behind him. “Now fuck off.”  
  
Boots and Ginger stared at him mutinously for a few more seconds, then capitulated gracelessly, scuffing their boots and muttering insults as they shuffled back to their car. As he turned around, Ponytail pulled something from his coat pocket, and a cold rush of adrenaline went through Clint, taking an automatic step closer to Bruce before he realized it was a cell phone.  
  
The asshole was taking pictures.  
  
Clint felt himself fill with rage, hot on the heels of the adrenaline rush and the relief, and he almost let out a howl as he nocked another arrow, aiming for the phone.  
  
Ponytail took off running.  
  
“You okay?” Bruce asked softly, putting a hand on Clint’s shoulder as they watched him disappear into the Jeep,.  
  
“Yeah,” Clint said, deflating. “Jesus Christ, what a bunch of fucking assholes.”  
  
Bruce nodded sympathetically. “Universal constant if I ever saw one.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“There are assholes everywhere.”  
  
The Jeep’s tires squealed as it peeled off, Ponytail hanging out the window still taking pictures.  
  
“Sometimes you wonder who you’re saving the world for,” Clint said darkly.  
  
Bruce gave him a wry smile. “Come back inside,” he steered them back to the porch, hand still warm and gentle on Clint’s shoulder, “dinner’s on the table.”  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
The next morning after his morning run, Clint sat down at his laptop to assess the damage.  
  
"Uh oh."  
  
Clint clicked and opened another page, and then another. "Oh _fuck_."  
  
He stared at the page, blinking hard three times, but the headline _Gay Cowboy Avenger?_ stayed stubbornly emblazoned all over his laptop screen.  
  
_Scandal and controversy! The Avenger Hawkeye was spotted getting cozy with an as-yet-unidentified male lover at a rural location in Ohio Saturday night…_  
  
Everything from the _Superhuman Star_ to _People_ to CNN to the freaking BBC World had an article. Most of the more respectable sites reported on the articles of the more gossipy websites and the resulting twitterstorm, but all of them featured grainy cellphone pictures of the farm, him and Bruce on the porch, and a rundown of the most popular speculations on the identity of “the man with the black hair”. Bruce’s face was obscured in all of the pictures and he was apparently completely unrecognizable out of his regular button-down and slacks combo.  
  
One of the websites had done an honest-to-god manip of the Brokeback Mountain poster with his face on it, and when he scrolled down, Clint found that Jake Gyllenhaal was their top pick for the man with the black hair. There were links to previous “outings” of other superheroes and celebrities, and long-winded analyses of how he was conducting this affair at a remote location because the other Avengers disapproved and he was ashamed, and how he was probably going to be kicked off the team just like that queer Iron Fist – Clint had to stifle some laughter there, since Danny had only been in town briefly and had left again to deal with some superhero business, and also, he hadn’t actually officially been on the team. Given how much time he spent in Jess and Luke’s room, though, Clint suspected they might not have been completely wrong. Someone had collected paparazzi pictures of affectionate gestures between any of the Avengers and made a highly imaginative timeline (Clint _wished_ his lovelife was that active, ha!).  
  
And there was one picture – grainy and blurry from the zoom – that was the crowning jewel on almost every article because it looked like they were kissing. Clint _knew_ they hadn’t been kissing on the porch, but even he had to take a second look before he figured out how they must’ve turned walking back to the house to make it look like that, Bruce’s hand on his shoulder, Clint turned back towards him. Ponytail had snapped a picture just as Clint sighed, so his eyes were closed and he was sagging forwards a little, into Bruce. All the other pictures could’ve been explained away, evidence of nothing more than Clint’s residence at the farm and the presence of a second person, but no one was going to believe a denial of the kissing pic, regardless of the fact _it wasn’t an actual kissing pic_. That was just his fucking luck.  
  
Bruce walked in from the kitchen and glanced over his shoulder at the laptop screen. "What’s up?"  
  
Clint hastily closed the most embarrassing tabs until he was left with the CNN page, which was still plenty embarrassing. Lost for words (other than expletives), Clint let the page speak for itself.  
  
_Clint Barton (better known as the Avenger Hawkeye) caused a stir on the internet last night by being photographed kissing an unidentified man at a remote farm near St. Clairsville, OH. Sources confirm Barton was spotted by locals as a result of his involvement in a bar fight earlier that week, which allegedly is also the cause of the injuries visible in the picture. Both print and internet media have lit up with speculation as to the identity of the Avenger’s mystery lover, as well as the possible consequences for Barton's involvement with the American superhero team..._  
  
“Um,” Bruce said.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That’s…“ Bruce stared at the picture.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Clint scrolled down through the articles, disconcerted to find more photos and vague descriptions of the farm’s location in some of them. “Dammit, I liked this place.”  
  
“I’m sure it’ll blow over,” Bruce said reassuringly, though to Clint he still sounded like he’d been knocked for a bit of a loop.  
  
"Safehouse ain't no safehouse if all the gossip mags in the world know where you're at, Bruce," Clint said dejectedly, "no matter what they think you do there." An alarming thought hit him. "Shit, in a few hours we're probably gonna be swamped by reporters.”

The phone rang. Clint's first instinct was to yell _Don’t answer it!_ but Bruce had already picked the cell phone up off the desk and was looking at the display. He handed the phone to Clint. "It's Tony."  
  
“Guess I should answer it, then,” he said, accepting the ringing phone.  
  
"Hey, Tony," Clint picked up with a longsuffering sigh, sinking back into the desk chair.  
  
"Barton, you couldn’t’ve given us a heads-up on your big gay reveal?" Tony said, mock-exasperatedly. "I've got fifty reporters camped outside my tower, and I think Steve would've liked some time to prepare his speech. He wanted to sound properly supportive and stuff, but now he had to wing it. Of course, Steve being Steve it was still very rousing. I think some of the reporters slunk home in shame."  
  
"Tony, I didn't out myself. They outed me."  
  
"Ah, yeah, didn’t think so," Tony said, sympathetically, changing tack. "Want me to get legal on it?"  
  
"Nah. I don't know. It's okay." Clint made a helpless motion with his hand. "I mean, I don't see how this is news anyway. Not to anyone who's read my SHIELD file, and that's floating round the ether for anyone who cares to take a look thanks to Nat."  
  
"Guess no one bothered to pick up on that, next to the whole ‘evil organisation has been manipulating our whole intelligence apparatus for the past 70 years’ thing." There were a number of metallic clinks on the other side of the line as Tony presumably wrestled some kind of gadget into compliance. He must be tinkering in his workshop. "And of course the story's so much more _interesting_ now: the secret getaway, the mystery lover, the suspicious bruises..." Tony said luridly, and Clint groaned loudly. _Fuck_ this. "So, who's the wilting flower you couldn't let any of us meet?" Tony continued, humor in his voice.  
  
"Bruce," Clint answered without thinking, and it wasn't until he heard something thunk on Tony's end that he realized what he'd said. "That is, um, they think it's Bruce. Bruce is here with me, and there's a bunch of assholes been bothering me, and people assumed. I don’t think they made him yet… But none of the shit in the papers is true, Tony. There's no ‘affair’ or," Clint shared a look with Bruce that was split about evenly between acute discomfort and borderline hysteric amusement. "Or romantic getaway, or ...whatever. It's an old safehouse and we go up here for a break when town makes us jittery. Nat too, sometimes."  
  
"So it's all bull?" Tony said, surprised.  
  
"Pretty much, yeah."  
  
"Any parts true?" There was no demand or forcefulness in the question, just curious amusement.  
  
"Well, I do own the farm," Clint said lightly.  
  
"And sometimes do dudes."  
  
Clint barked a laugh. "Yeah."  
  
"You sure you don't want me to get legal on this? They got no right to out you like this."  
  
"Naw, it's okay. It's not like I'm gonna deny it, and all the rest just seems like too much fuss to bother."  
  
"Yeah, we all know how much you hate fuss," Tony said good-naturedly. "Alright then. Hang tight, yeah?"  
  
“Yeah. Actually, I think we’ll come back soon. Location’s pretty …compromised here, and I’d rather ignore the press from high on up in the Tower than from a flimsy farmhouse. We don’t even have a fence.”  
  
“Alright, we’ll be on the lookout for you guys then.”  
  
“Thanks, Tony.”  
  
“No problem. See you soon.”  
  
Clint clicked his phone shut, and it started ringing again almost immediately. A look at the display revealed it was Kate. Clint dodged the call and shut off the phone. He didn’t feel like explaining himself again to another person, and in any case he needed to have a talk with Bruce, uninterrupted by the deluge of phone calls he was pretty sure was about to inundate them. Clint sent up a little prayer of thanks for the absence of a landline on the farm.  
  
“Sooo,” Clint started awkwardly, turning towards Bruce, who’d sat down on the living room couch, watching him as he took Tony’s call. Clint went over his side of the conversation in his head, tallying up the information Bruce would have caught. He tossed his phone from hand to hand, feeling jittery. “This is a mess.”  
  
“Things bad in New York?”  
  
“Pretty bad, yeah. Apparently the entire New York press is camped out on Tony’s lawn hoping Cap’s gonna turn me out on my ass because of gay cooties.”  
  
“I’ll bet that didn’t brighten his day,” Bruce said.  
  
“Apparently he was very supportive.” Clint couldn’t help but snicker at the image of Steve defending his honor to the press. _The Avengers welcomes and supports all its members, regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation…  
  
_ Another awkward silence fell. Clint tossed his phone some more.  
  
“You told Tony not to sue?”  
  
“Yeah. I figure, it’s just gossip magazines, I don’t say anything, they’ll lose interest by the end of the week, and it’s not like they’re slandering me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve actually sorta been expecting something like this since Nat dumped all of SHIELD’s dirty laundry on the internet. There’s some stuff in my files…psych evals, missions, that sorta thing. It’s not a secret. I’ve just never been high-profile enough for anyone to give a fuck until now. That is-“ Clint added suddenly, “no one’s recognized you yet – you’ve seen the pics, they’re pretty bad – but, um, it could be awkward for you if they do. So, if- if you wanted I could send out a statement? Saying nothing’s going on? I mean, I doubt they’ll believe anything I say, and I’ll probably have to deny all of it—“  
  
“Clint.”  
  
“—and it’s not like I’ve had any more luck in the boyfriend department than the girlfriend department, so the question of me being out is, um, mainly philosophical at this point—“  
  
“Clint.”  
  
“ –It’s just that it could potentially be awkward if I were, at some point in the future, to be more lucky. In that area. Um. But that way you wouldn’t be tangled up with it? So we could do that? If you want?”  
  
“Clint,” Bruce was rubbing between his brows with some consternation, but when he looked at Clint, he seemed amused. “You don’t have to throw yourself on your sword for me.”  
  
“No?” Clint asked, surprised. “I mean, it’s true they haven’t recognized you yet, but that probably won’t be much of a leap, and it would be better to do it before –“  
  
“It’s not that. Even if they do, I don’t care what the gossip magazines say. They’re _gossip magazines_. It’s not like I read them.”  
  
“The whole media circus is gonna be pretty hard to avoid,” Clint cautioned.  
  
“Clint,” Bruce grabbed his wrist. Clint startled a little. “My research got _obliterated_ in pretty much every academic journal known to man _for years_ , and then I got chased around the planet by assassins ‘cause I turned into a giant green monster whenever I got more than slightly miffed. They _shot rockets at me_. I’m sure I can take whatever _People_ decides to dish out.”  
  
Clint let out a long breath. “Alright then.”  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
Though everyone at the Tower was as _understanding_ and _supportive_ as they could be, and Pepper had screened all the press calls to the landline, and Thor had explained to him, at length, that all Asgardians were culturally bisexual, and how his brother Loki had once transformed into a lady horse and had little horse babies with some mythical stallion, so _really_ , he wasn’t bothered, at all, by this new bit of information about Clint and he didn’t understand why anyone else would be either, Clint made a run for it within a day or two and hid out at his apartment. Where hopefully none of his neighbors would rat him out to the press.  
  
He disconnected the landline and TV cable and the internet on his laptop and spent 24 hours of blissful peace marathoning _The Walking Dead_ on Netflix via the Xbox, where he didn’t have to see any news at all. On the second day, Kate showed up uninvited with lasagna and Lucky in tow, and told him he looked pathetic, and not at all like New York’s new LGBT poster boy. She plonked herself down on the couch, shoving his legs away to make room, and Clint felt so ridiculously grateful to know her, because at least this was normal. If he hadn’t been an Avenger, he honestly thought he could’ve cried a little when Lucky licked his nose, all worried canine affection.  
  
“Well,” Kate said, “at least you got something good out of it.”  
  
“Huh?” Clint said, pushing himself upright and away from Lucky’s doggy tongue-kisses.  
  
“Bruce,” she said, pointedly, as if he were a moron of the first grade.  
  
“Katie,” Clint rubbed his eyes, groaning frustratedly. “We’re not- we’re not dating. Nothing happened. We just happened to both be up there at the same time.”  
  
“Oh,” Kate said. “Well, that sucks.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Kate pushed a bag under his nose. “Dorito?”  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
As the weeks passed things went back to normal, for a definition of normal that now included the tabloids continuing to try and spot him with his ‘lover’ and conservative pundits sporadically giving doom-thinking speeches on what being protected by a bunch of queers “meant for America”. Clint didn’t really notice it much, apart from the paparazzi hiding in the bushes whenever he went out to buy coffee -- he was convinced he could no longer take anyone along to Starbucks without making the cover of the _Superhuman Star_ \-- and the occasional small-time thug throwing slurs at him when they busted whatever crime they were busting that day. Really, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before (and worse) when his costume had included a kilt and, turned out, insults were even easier to take when you had Captain America battering the guys into the pavement and lecturing them all the way to the ambulance. _Who knew?_  
  
The team was nice about the mayhem, his earlier flight from the Tower notwithstanding. He got teased about his lack of a boyfriend as much as he got about his lack of a girlfriend, and after a few days even the jokes tapered off, replaced with easy acceptance. When some reporter tried their luck at a press conference following a throwdown with a bunch of Doombots in Central Park, Tony intercepted the question with a cool “This press conference concerns the events in the park only. Mr. Barton’s private life is not up for discussion”, even if Clint figured at this point it’d probably be easier to release a statement so maybe they’d be satisfied and leave the damn thing be, seeing as the media’s normal ADD attention span just didn’t seem to apply. It was exceedingly weird to have so many people interested in his love life, especially since most days that was something he’d describe in military acronyms like MIA and FUBAR.  
  
It wasn’t _all_ bad, though. When they were stuck doing clean-up after the fight in Central Park, the usual trickle of civilians came up to them to ask for autographs, and two young teenagers came up to him holding hands, and told him how much his coming out meant to them. (He hadn’t, technically, come out publically, but then as far as he was concerned, he’d never been _in_. He signed the card they passed him and wished them good luck, feeling warm on the inside.)  
  
Finally, he got Pepper to get him a spot on the Daily Show, somewhere he wouldn’t be required to talk too long and where he could be as sarcastic as he liked. By that time, the question of _who_ he was dating had become deflectable in favor of the general fact of his out-ness. (The press never did figure out it was Bruce in the pictures, which, not gonna lie, hurt a little, like what, Clint wasn't good enough to even consider the possibility?) He made a few “how is this news” jokes with Stewart and suspected he wasn’t terribly articulate about his dating philosophy, but five minutes later he was backstage and feeling a little lighter for having gone on camera, wondering if the feeling would last or he’d wake up tomorrow thinking _What the fuck did I do_? Clint took the glass of water offered by one of the backstage assistants and shrugged. Either way, the cat was out of the closet now. _#Hawkbi_ trended on Twitter all night.  
  
After that, the press calls to the Tower slowly died off. There was no more scoop, no more exclusive first interview with Newly Out Queer Hawkeye to chase that apparently had been so coveted.  
  
He finally felt at ease enough to start browsing realtor websites looking for a replacement for the farm.  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
It took him a few weeks to find something that was just right. There was an old farmhouse upstate a few hours from New York, dirt-cheap ‘cause it’d been up for years and the owners want to get rid of it. He used a new alias to arrange the sale - once a spy, always a spy – and before he knew it, it was late on a Sunday morning and he was nervously offering Bruce a key in the sun-drenched living room of the Avengers Tower, both of them still in sweats and sleep tees.  
  
Clint rubbed his neck awkwardly as he held out the key. “I understand if you’re not too eager to jump back into bed with me given what happened last time,” he said, and oh god, why did he say it like that, _why, brain, why_ , “and you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, obviously, but it hasn’t exactly got quieter round here so I thought I’d offer. ”  
  
Bruce looked surprised and a little speechless, juggling his half-filled coffee mug to take the key. “I-. Clint. Thank you,” he said earnestly. His fingers curled around the key, almost reverently, protectively. Guess Bruce _had_ missed the peace and quiet.  
  
One of Bruce’s hands gripped his arm, just above the elbow. “Really, thank you. It means a lot that you’d ask, that you’d trust me again with this, even after,” he hesitated a moment, a smile breaking over his face, “the whole crazy media circus.”  
  
“Well,” Clint rubbed his neck again, flushing a little, “in that case would you maybe like to help me move in? It’s mostly furnished but I’m gonna drive out there this weekend with a bunch of stuff and some paint and stuff to fix up the house where needed. There’s multiple rooms, you could put some stuff there if you like,” he added uncertainly.    
  
Of course, that was when Nat walked in and took one look at Bruce’s hand on his arm and how close they were standing and turned on her heel and marched back out.  
  
Clint rolled his eyes at her retreating back.  
  
It seemed getting the wrong idea about him and Bruce wasn’t exclusive to the tabloids.

  
  
*****  
  
  
  
The next weekend they didn’t have any crime to fight, they piled a bunch of boxes with books, CDs, curtains, bed sheets, and a variety of other crap into the back of the Challenger and headed north. Natasha rode on the back of the motorcycle with Steve to free up the backseat for more boxes and a couple of six packs, and so she and Steve could head back to NYC at the end of the day. Tony was stuck in stockholder meetings all day, but he’d given them a box with a bunch of complicated-looking tech gadgets that Tony assured him were a state of the art security system that Nat could install around the door and windows. Clint wasn’t sure when this had become a team outing, but he was glad to have the help, even if it meant the secret of the farm was out, at least in the Avengers Tower.  
  
“We’re going to have to get you a hat,” Nat said, looking up at the farm’s façade of red timber and white wooden shutters.  
  
Clint was busy letting Lucky out of the backseat and pulling out the boxes, so he was only half paying attention. “What?”  
  
“A cowboy hat. To complete the image.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “And maybe a hoe.”  
  
Clint opened his mouth to answer, but the combined looks from Steve, Bruce and Natasha quelled his response. “You’re better than that,” Bruce told him, taking one of the boxes from him.  
  
“I’m really not and you know it,” Clint said, grinning.  
  
“Well,” Bruce smirked back, smug, “the moment’s passed now.”  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
Clint's first order of business in the new house was to plonk a six pack into the fridge. The second was to plug in the stereo and put on the Stones.  
  
" _Paint It Black_ , really?" Bruce asked, amused.  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Don’t give me ideas," Natasha said, waltzing past Clint to go check out the spare bedrooms. “You promised me a room.”  
  
“Yeah, just pick whichever you like. Don’t pick the master!” He yelled after her. Motioning at the battered toolbox and the box of nails at his feet, he said, “Now, let’s put these to good use.”  
  
Bruce got set to work on the kitchen sink and bath, both of which stubbornly refused to yield any water, while Steve and Clint nailed down the loose floorboards and set to fixing the banister on the stairs. After she’d claimed one of the spare rooms, Natasha dragged in the rest of the boxes from the car and took the Challenger three towns over for a grocery run.    
  
Bruce's first impression of the new farm was that it was cozy. It was bigger than the last one, Clint perhaps anticipating more extensive use. Most of the furniture was old and made out of wood, and the kitchen was an interesting combination of dark wood and sea foam green tiles likely birthed by the 60s. All the shelves were empty and it looked like the house had recently been cleaned. Maybe Clint'd arranged to have a cleaning crew over, or sorted something with the previous owners?  
  
In any case, there was plenty of space to put all the stuff they’d brought, and Bruce thought with pleasure of having his own little room upstairs, where he could put his spare yoga mat in the corner and some of his old shirts in the closet. He started making a little mental list of things he should bring along next time, books to put on the nightstand and shampoo and shaving cream for in the bathroom, an extra quilt for the bed in case the nights got cold. He tried not to think about how he was already thinking of the farm in terms of a home, not a safehouse.  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
Bruce was going through the box with books when he found it.  
  
It was late in the afternoon and he’d been sat on the floor next to the blaring stereo, sorting Clint’s book collection onto the living room shelves. There was the by-now familiar collection of Vonnegut novels, beat-up but still brightly colored, a bunch of Bond books, the requisite copy of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There were a bunch of random books on car repair, foreign languages, some historical books on the circus. A variety of weird coffee table books that looked like Clint’d picked them up from the bargain bin at Goodwill. Bruce had picked up what looked like one of the oldest paperbacks in the box, and as he pulled it out he realized it was a copy of Jules Verne’s _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_. Some rooting around also revealed _Around the World in 80 Days_ and _Journey to the Center of the Earth,_ all three volumes spine-cracked and yellowed with age. Charmed – he’d always liked Verne himself, especially as a young teenager - Bruce opened them, fighting down a smile when he found Clint’s name scrawled onto the title page in a slanting chickenscratch even worse than Clint’s current handwriting. Clint must’ve owned these as a kid, and had obviously read them a lot. Given what little he knew of Clint’s turbulent youth, Bruce was surprised at finding such a memento. Clint must’ve picked these up while in the circus, or even before, and kept them all these years through a variety of personal and professional transformations.  
  
“Oh,” Bruce said, startled, as something dropped out of the last volume.  
  
He picked it up. It looked like—  
  
Bruce had to put a hand across his mouth to keep from bursting into laughter.  
  
Clint’d had these in the circus alright. The polaroid showed a young Clint, bronze-skinned and bright-haired, aiming a bright purple bow. Apart from a pair of sparkly fingerless gloves and the strap of the quiver, he appeared bare-chested.  
  
Feeling an electric sort of excitement, Bruce shook the book, rifling through the pages to see if any more pictures would fall out. Two did. _20,000 Leagues_ yielded another, and _Around the World_ two more.  
  
The pictures had that drained-color look typical of old polaroids, but they were still clear enough to make out. There was another picture of Clint in the ring, further away this time, so that Bruce could see the glittery pink-purple of Clint’s costume leggings and bare feet, but the other pictures were more close-range, informal. One showed a row of young circus kids sitting shoulder to shoulder, passing a bottle of cider between them, Clint squeezed in on the left, easy to pick out because of his bright yellow hair. Two others showed different stages of what Bruce assumed was an acrobatic act, Clint and a young Indian girl arched over backwards on the ground, muscles straining as they defied gravity. And there was one of Clint grinning at the camera, one arm propped up on his knee in front of him. The color on that one was very orange, and the contrast was sharp, as if it had been taken by candlelight in a dark room. It was close enough that Bruce could make out three little golden rings in the shell of Clint’s left ear. Bruce let out another laugh.  
  
“Hey, what are you so happy about in here, huh?” Clint sauntered in, a bottle of Heineken dangling precariously between his fingers.  
  
“Nothing! I-“ Bruce had to put his hand back across his mouth to keep from grinning like a loon. He held out the photographs.  
  
Clint frowned at them for a moment before recognition struck and he went an adorable shade of pink. “Oh fuck,” he groaned, hiding his face in his hands, polaroids and beer bottle pointing out from his fingers.  
  
Somehow, that bright-eyed look of mortification was what finally broke Bruce, and he ended up flat on his back on the hardwood floor, laughing hysterically until his eyes ran with tears.  
  
“Sooo,” Clint said, when Bruce’d sobered enough to look at him. There was laughter in his eyes too, and the flush had spread down to his neck. “I totally forgot those were in there.”  
  
“Do you want me to put them back in?” He held up the books. “They were tucked into these. If they were keeping your page marked, I’m afraid you’ve lost your place,” he said, smiling.  
  
Clint flashed him a brief grin. “Don’t think I’ve read those in fifteen years.” He rubbed his face, clearly embarrassed to hand them back. “’S good a place as any, ‘suppose.”  
  
Bruce took the pictures, tucking them carefully into the front of _Journey to the Center of the Earth_.  
  
“They’re, um, very…” Bruce trailed off, looking at the last one again, the dark one. The tone of the picture was so intimate he wondered if it’d been taken by a lover. _A_ g _irlfriend? Boyfriend?_  
  
“Yes, very,” Clint said, sounding a little strained. He flashed another brief smile, more than a little bashful. “Don’t show ‘em to Natasha,” he said gruffly.  
  
Bruce gave him a reassuring smile, closing the book and tucking it into the line of books on the shelf with care. “Your secret’s safe with me.”  
  
“You’re a pal, Doc.” Clint took a step forward and held out his beer. “Here, take this, I’ll get another. You look comfy down there on the floor.”  
  
“You don’t have to bribe me with beer, Clint.”  
  
“Naw,” Clint wiggled the bottle enticingly, “but I betchar you’re gonna take it anyway, right?”  
  
Bruce did. “How are things going upstairs?”  
  
“Good. Almost done. I don’t think I’ve seen Nat lift a single piece of furniture but Steve’s a real help. He don’t even need a step ladder to get the curtains on the rails.”  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
Along with the beer, they’d brought some food in a cooler, and around five Natasha disappeared into the kitchen and started pulling things out of the fridge. When the house started to fill up with the warm smell of spicy meat and onions, the others drifted downstairs and came to join Bruce in the living room, brandishing a fresh set of beers, having been banished from the kitchen. Apparently their security clearance didn’t include watching Natasha being domestic.  
  
They ate the _golubsty_ \- meat and rice rolled in cabbage leaves - at the table in the kitchen, chatting companionably as they handed round the bowls of tomato sauce and sour cream. Bruce hadn’t had a lot of Russian food, but Steve and Clint seemed familiar. Dinner was a quiet affair, everyone slow and satisfied with the food in their bellies and the warmth of the last sunlight streaming into the kitchen. Natasha had even brought a small stack of _blini_ wrapped in foil for dessert - one minute in the microwave and the pancakes were good to go, ready to be covered in cream and jam. It was good, hearty food, exactly the kind you wanted after a day of mucking through dust and clutter and hammering in floorboards.  
  
After the dishes, Steve and Natasha put on their coats and headed back to New York, the motorcycle disappearing into the orange-purple light of the low evening sun, and Clint disappeared back upstairs.  
  
Bruce spent a while mucking about with the stereo and Clint’s CD collection, Lucky watching him idly from the couch with his one good eye drooping sleepily.  
  
“Got any requests?” Bruce asked, ticking the CD cases to the side one by one.  
  
Lucky wuffled softly, flicking one ear to the side.  
  
Bruce picked out a case and put it in the CD player. “The Cure it is.”  
  
He watched the news for a while on the old television in the corner, the volume turned down so he could listen to the music while he read the headlines scrolling past on CNN. Apparently the Fantastic Four had prevented a bank heist in Manhattan, and some people in the south of Australia were being evacuated because of impending forest fires. Nothing dire.  
  
He drifted, rubbing at Lucky’s head where it was pressed up against his thigh, listening to the stereo.  
  
It took him a while to notice the clutter-y sounds coming from upstairs had stopped.  
  
Clint had been oddly subdued at dinner, smiling at Natasha’s and Steve's banter but not making any jokes of his own. He wondered if everything was alright.  
  
Maybe he’d like some coffee?  
  
Bruce went up the creaky stairs, bearing two steaming mugs. He passed Natasha’s room – the closet door stood half-open, revealing a row of black t-shirts and a leather jacket – and his own with his bags still on the bed to get to the master.  
  
“Hey,” he said softly, and was arrested mid-knock by the sight of Clint lying on the bed. For a second he thought he was asleep, but then he realized his breathing wasn’t right for sleep.  
  
Clint was lying on his back in his torn jeans and paint-stained Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt, the edge riding up a little to expose a strip of taut, tan stomach, arm across his eyes. Soft music emanated from the laptop shoved down among the folds of the bed sheets. The colored lampshade on the nightstand cast the room in a dim orange light - Bruce was put in mind of the photographs hiding in the Verne novels downstairs, and he felt a little tug in his gut.  
  
Clint should have looked relaxed, sprawled across the bed the way he was, but instead he radiated an air of intense misery. He didn’t look up when Bruce stepped into the room and navigated around the bed.  
  
“I brought coffee,” Bruce said, setting one of the mugs on the nightstand, and sat down on the edge of the bed, turned sideways to face Clint. Getting a little worried now, he put his hand on Clint’s on his stomach and was surprised to find Clint’s hand was clenched tight, and his stomach underneath was tense. “What- _“_ Bruce’s attention zeroed in on the laptop.  
  
It was the _Superhuman Star_ article.  
  
That ridiculous title, and there under it was the picture that looked like them kissing, in all its grainy glory. Bruce’s stomach gave another wicked tug, and his skin prickled all the way down to his fingertips.  
  
“Clint?”  
  
Remembering the ASL, for a moment he had the wild thought that maybe Clint couldn’t hear him -- he was deaf, maybe his hearing aids were off -- but then surely he would have looked at him when he’d touched him?  
  
“Clint, can you look at me please?” Bruce tapped his thumb against the back of Clint’s hand. “Are you alright?”  
  
Clint’s eyes clenched themselves further shut, his head turning to the side.  
  
Bruce took another long look at the laptop, trying to figure out what was going on, what to do. There were plenty of puzzle pieces here, but he couldn’t quite figure out- He leaned over Clint’s knees and closed the laptop, the little _snickt_ noise sounding loud in the stillness of the room.  
  
“Clint?”  
  
“I’m sorry, it’s stupid, I’m just being dramatic.” Clint tried to roll away, but was stopped by Bruce’s hand grabbing his wrist. His eyes had finally opened but he wasn’t looking at Bruce.  
  
“What’s going on here, huh?” Bruce asked gently.  
  
“I’m being stupid, that’s all. I’ll sort myself out.” Clint’s eyes flashed to him briefly, then darted away again. “You should go downstairs, watch some TV. I’ll be down in a bit.”  
  
Bruce raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “I’m not just gonna leave you here like this. Tell me what’s going on.”  
  
“It’s nothing. I-I’m just tired.”  
  
Bruce put a tentative hand on Clint’s cheek.  
  
Clint’s eyes snapped to his so fast it almost gave Bruce whiplash just to watch.  

Maybe the puzzle wasn’t that complicated after all. He traced Clint’s cheekbone with his thumb, and Clint’s mouth went slack, lips pink and a little wet.  
  
The inside of his mouth was pink, and Bruce wanted to taste it, so he leaned down and kissed him.  
  
One of Clint’s hands came up and tangled in the hair at the back of his neck, holding him in place. Clint melted under him, opening readily, and Bruce held his jaw and deepened the kiss. It lasted a long time.  
  
“Please tell me this is not a pity kiss,” Clint said, a little desperately, when they broke apart.

“No, it’s not. It’s-“ Bruce bit his lip, looking away. He should’ve noticed, should’ve said, done, something months ago, and the guilt gnawed at him. Clint’d looked so miserable when he came in... “No, it’s-“ He tried to explain but he couldn’t resist kissing Clint again.  
  
When he broke away again, Clint was looking worried. Dammit, he wasn’t doing this right.  
  
“I should’ve said something. Before now.” He stroked his thumb across Clint’s cheekbone, across his jaw. “It’s not a pity kiss,” Bruce assured him, leaning close and pressing another kiss to Clint’s lips.  
  
“Oh good,” Clint’s arms went around his neck, and his smile was more than a little heartbreaking. “I mean, I’m not gonna pretend I’ve never taken a pity fuck over nothing, but I don’t think I could handle one from you.”  
  
“I wouldn’t-“  
  
Clint cut him off with a kiss. “And I’m glad you’re saying something now. I know you haven’t…dated a lot lately.”  
  
“It was cowardly of me,” Bruce said, stubbornly. Oh god, why was he still talking? They could be _kissing_.  
  
“I didn’t say anything either,” Clint said.  
  
“You didn’t know about me,” Bruce protested. “I knew about you.”  
  
“Knowing I swing that way’s no guarantee of reciprocation.”  
  
“No, but I…suspected. You were so kind to me the months after New York, and the way you looked at me sometimes, I thought it might be more. I liked it, I liked knowing that. It felt safe, you know, not saying anything? ‘Cause then I could think that and I wouldn’t be contradicted, and I could just enjoy…you liking me, without any risks attached. But it wasn’t fair of me not to show you back.”  
  
“Show me back?”  
  
“That I liked you too. I thought,” Bruce hung his head, sighing softly, “I thought you’d get over it, so it was harmless if I enjoyed it while it lasted. I didn’t think it was anything you were in for the long run.”  
  
“I am. I’ve,” Clint bit his lip, swallowed thickly, “liked you for a long time.”  
  
“I know, and that’s why I should’ve said something. I didn’t think it was anything that could hurt you,” Bruce said, smiling wryly.  
  
Clint scrunched up his nose, turning his head to the side. Bruce kissed his cheek, then the soft skin behind his ear. Slowly, tenderly, coaxing his mouth back to his. Clint was boxed in by Bruce’s arm on the bed next to his shoulder, but his hands lay on the bed, palm-up, relaxed. He didn’t look like he wanted to go anywhere else. Bruce rubbed his nose against Clint’s, feeling the little bump of bone where it’d been broken more than once, and travelled lower to press a deep kiss to Clint’s mouth.  
  
“I used to watch _King Kong_ ,” Clint confided softly, when they came up for air. “Kate used to make fun of me for it. The ending always tore me up, ‘cause the Big Guy’s like that, he’s held me like that, and I’d think about the General chasing you, and how I’m scared for the Big Guy, what people might do to you and him if things were different.”  
  
Bruce was scared of those things too, of course. “Things aren’t like that now,” he said. He was hit by a sudden wave of sense-memory through a haze of green, the tender care as the Hulk had wrapped a hand around a hurt Clint and lifted him off the pavement, had carried him against his side. “He likes you too, by the way.”  
  
“Yeah, I kinda got that. He’s a lot worse at dissembling than you are.”  
  
Bruce felt a fond smile take over his lips. “I’ll try and work on that.”  
  
“Nah,” Clint stretched on the bed, curving his arms above his head. Bruce was briefly mesmerized by the flex of Clint’s biceps before he managed to bring his attention back to Clint’s face, looking so soft in the dim light of the bedside lamp. “It’s okay, really. I’m happy you said something now.” Clint’s knee came up and pressed lightly against Bruce’s side. “That’s enough.”  
  
And Bruce didn’t think there was anything left that needed saying at that point, which was good, since the whole picture Clint was painting under him had sent his tenuous grasp on words scattering in all directions.  
  
Bruce leaned down to kiss Clint again, and Clint didn’t grab him or try to push him over, just melted into the bed under him, curled himself around Bruce, and let himself be kissed.  
  
“Slow,” Bruce said, a little breathlessly, trying to rein in his heartbeat, which was threatening to run away from him. “We gotta go slow or it’s not safe.”  
  
“Slow’s good,” Clint said, not even opening his eyes, just arching his back and baring his neck. “Slow’s ace, I’m good with slow, I am with this program, Bruce.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
Bruce didn’t bother arguing any further, since it was pretty clear Clint was telling the truth about being on the same page, all lax limbs and soft moans under him, and also, his mouth was occupied.  
  
  
  
*****  
  
  
  
Bruce woke the next morning feeling wonderfully luxurious with all his naked skin brushing against the crisp new sheets and the warm pre-noon sun warming the bed through the blinds. It took him a moment to notice the bed was empty apart from him, and he felt a brief stab of terror in his gut. Then his eyes fell on the window, and the empty spot under it where Clint’s running shoes had been the evening before.  
  
_Oh ye of little faith_ , he berated himself, smiling against the pillow as he burrowed deeper into the sheets. The pillow smelled of Clint’s hairgel, and the sheets still held faint traces of their lovemaking.  
  
Bruce drifted for a while, basking in the sun and the bed and last night’s memories like a lizard on a rock.  
  
Eventually, he had to go take a piss. In the bathroom, he decided he wanted coffee, and maybe breakfast if there was anything appetizing. And preferably to find Clint. He’d held out an idle hope of Clint returning to the bed after his run, but he hadn’t heard him hit the shower or even come back into the house.  
  
He pulled on jeans and a t-shirt from the pile on the floor next to the bed, ignoring the one crumpled next to the nightstand, covered in stains. He blushed a little, though he felt a weird sort of satisfaction too.  
  
The coffee machine delivered the required caffeine boost into one of Clint’s wacky mugs, and the kitchen cabinets revealed a stash of Lucky Charms - Bruce smiled at the three boxes shoved haphazardly onto the shelf - and muesli bars, one of which was enough to settle his stomach for now. He stood in the kitchen, contentedly sipping his coffee and munching on the muesli bar while he tried to spot Clint returning through the kitchen window.  
  
In the silence of the empty house, Bruce became aware of a strange purring noise just outside, coming from the porch. He pushed open the door and found Clint stretched out on the wooden bench on the porch, a satisfied-looking tabby curled up on his chest. Clint was still in his running clothes, arms tucked behind his head, and he was fast asleep.  
  
Bruce had to press his hand to his mouth to stop the little bark of laughter that threatened to escape him.  
  
He put the nearly-empty coffee mug on the porch and sat down on the bench, his hip pressing against Clint’s. This close, he could see sweat pooled in the dip at the bottom of Clint’s throat, just above where his collarbones kissed each other. It glistened a little in the sunlight, and Bruce was mesmerized, captivated, enraptured. _And really stupidly in love_ , his brain supplied helpfully. The cat looked at him narrowly, its eyes bright green between heavy grey lids.  
  
Bruce shifted so he blocked the sunlight on Clint’s face, watching his brows screw together a little as he stirred. Bruce shifted again, letting the light fall back over him, and Clint’s hand came up to block the sun.  
  
“Hey,” he said, softly, his voice rough with sleep.  
  
“I see you’ve made a friend,” Bruce said, giving a nod at the cat.  
  
“Yeah,” Clint patted the cat’s head with a sleep-clumsy hand, which it tolerated with that air of lordly superiority common to all felines. “’S a friendlier specimen than the last one. Natasha hasn’t got to this one yet.”  
  
“I’m sure she’ll get on that soon enough.”  
  
The look of horror that flashed across Clint’s face was hilarious.  
  
“Sleep well?” Clint asked after they’d sat in silence for a while.  
  
“Excellent,” Bruce assured him. “I would’ve worried about you being gone, but I noticed your running shoes. Or rather, their disappearance.”  
  
Clint’s eyes widened. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t think-“  
  
Bruce put up a hand to stop him, then let it drop to Clint’s lips. He leaned down and kissed him for good measure. “It’s fine. But I _was_ hoping to…entice you back.”  
  
“That so?” Clint murmured. His hand had latched itself onto the front of Bruce’s t-shirt, and was pulling him down into another kiss.  
  
“Oh yes,” Bruce assured him, very seriously, trying not to break into a grin prematurely. He raised an eyebrow instead. “That is, if you haven’t expended all your energy tramping round the countryside before the sun’s even up.“  
  
“Oh, I got energy in spades. Buckets. Tons.” Clint made an illustrative movement with his hands, closing and opening his fists with the palms up. It took Bruce a moment to realize it was an ASL sign, presumably the one for _loads,_ and that Clint had used it unconsciously. “I got more energy than you can shake a stick at, Banner.”  
  
“Alright then.” Bruce offered him a hand up, smiling. The cat jumped off in a huff and disappeared around the corner of the porch. “Come upstairs and show me then.”  
  
As Clint scrambled off the bench, Bruce took a moment to look out across the quiet emptiness around them, the patchy grass stretching into the distance until it hit the tree line, all of it covered by a wide blue sky. By tomorrow night, they’d be back in New York, and Bruce was going to kiss Clint there in full view of anyone who cared to look.   

**Author's Note:**

>  _The Superhuman Star_ is, of course, a reference to [this wonderful fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/257349) by nightwalker, without which this plotbunny might never have entered my head.


End file.
